Journal
MICROBIAL ECOLOGY
Volume 65, Issue 4, Pages 995-1010Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00248-012-0159-y
Keywords
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Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [OCE 07269989, 0812913, 0825466, CBET 0826819, 1230543, 1240851]
- U.S. EPA-STAR project [R82867701]
- NOAA/EPA-ECOHAB project [NA05NOS4781194]
- North Carolina Sea Grant Program [R/MER-47]
- California Delta Stewardship Council [2044]
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Environmental Biology [1240851] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Division Of Ocean Sciences [812913] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Ocean Sciences
- Directorate For Geosciences [825466] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Div Of Chem, Bioeng, Env, & Transp Sys
- Directorate For Engineering [1230543] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Cyanobacteria are the Earth's oldest oxygenic photoautotrophs and have had major impacts on shaping its biosphere. Their long evolutionary history (similar to 3.5 by) has enabled them to adapt to geochemical and climatic changes, and more recently anthropogenic modifications of aquatic environments, including nutrient over-enrichment (eutrophication), water diversions, withdrawals, and salinization. Many cyanobacterial genera exhibit optimal growth rates and bloom potentials at relatively high water temperatures; hence global warming plays a key role in their expansion and persistence. Bloom-forming cyanobacterial taxa can be harmful from environmental, organismal, and human health perspectives by outcompeting beneficial phytoplankton, depleting oxygen upon bloom senescence, and producing a variety of toxic secondary metabolites (e.g., cyanotoxins). How environmental factors impact cyanotoxin production is the subject of ongoing research, but nutrient (N, P and trace metals) supply rates, light, temperature, oxidative stressors, interactions with other biota (bacteria, viruses and animal grazers), and most likely, the combined effects of these factors are all involved. Accordingly, strategies aimed at controlling and mitigating harmful blooms have focused on manipulating these dynamic factors. The applicability and feasibility of various controls and management approaches is discussed for natural waters and drinking water supplies. Strategies based on physical, chemical, and biological manipulations of specific factors show promise; however, a key underlying approach that should be considered in almost all instances is nutrient (both N and P) input reductions; which have been shown to effectively reduce cyanobacterial biomass, and therefore limit health risks and frequencies of hypoxic events.
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